Parents of kids with ADHD urged to look out for this ‘red flag’

A post on social media has gone viral after a mum asked other parents if they could spot the “red flag” in a photo of her son sleeping.

She claimed in the Facebook post from October 24 that her discovery could ‘change lives’.

Melody Yazdani noticed her son Kian acting up when he began to get behaviour reports from school.

Her son, now aged eight, was behaving badly for a surprising reason, according to the Mirror.

The post starts off: “All parents. If you have a child, I’m going to tell you something you need to know that you have probably never heard. And please share this.

“There is a huge red flag in the picture I am sharing with this story. Do you see it?”

Kian had not had any problems in Kindergarten and was always “intelligent, feisty and extremely active,” so Melody was surprised when Kian’s teacher told her he was pushing other children and “having a hard time controlling his body.”

With new systems in place at school, his behaviour improved – but at home it got worse, with meltdowns over little things.

“Every morning it’s tantrum after tantrum, before we even get out of bed,” she said.

“Hitting and throwing things, and the screaming. All the screaming. Starting at 5am every morning.

“We were at a loss – how did he become this way, what could we have done different?”

The red flag

The photo of Kian sleeping that Melody posted to social media (Image: Melody Yazdani/Facebook)

Kian started to see a therapist, who recommended ADHD testing.

‘Lightning struck’ when Melody found an article linking ADHD to sleep disordered breathing and mouth breathing.

The red flag in Melody’s photograph is that Kian’s mouth is open while he sleeps.

She wrote: “CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BREATHE THROUGH THEIR MOUTHS. Not while awake, not while asleep. Never.

“Mouth breathing is NOT NORMAL and has long term consequences for health. I’ll repeat, because this is important – MOUTH BREATHING IS NOT NORMAL, NOT DURING THE DAY OR AT NIGHT.

“When a child breathes through their mouth, their brain (and body) is not getting enough oxygen. At night, this lowered oxygen saturation is detrimental to the quality of sleep and their brain’s ability to get enough rest.”

Melody listed other problems mouth breathing can cause before explaining that sleep deprivation in children and ADHD exhibit ‘the exact same symptoms’.

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She claims studies with medicated ADHD kids, where their sleep disordered breathing had been fixed, showed improvement in symptoms and within six months 70% of the children were no longer medicated.

“As in, their ADHD was cured. Because it wasn’t ADHD. In 70% of children. Let that sink in,” she wrote.

‘Right in front of our eyes’

Kian was diagnosed with sleep apnea and sinusitis.

“He got exactly 0 minutes of REM sleep during the first study, and oxygen saturation in the low 80%, and his sinuses were 90% blocked,” Melody explained.

“We had no idea that Kian had a headache daily, but it was just his normal so he never thought to tell us.”

The mum noticed an “immediate change” when Kian’s tonsils and adenoids were removed, breathing through his nose when he came out of surgery.

“We have seen a complete 180 in behavior (sic)”, she wrote. “No more angry tantrums, no more fixation on little OCD things, it’s been an enormous change.

“Here’s why I am sharing: No one, in my 12 years of parenting, ever told me any of this.

“All the signs were there, right in front of our eyes, and I had no clue.”